PYSEC-2026-3986

Apache Airflow Apache Kafka provider versions 1.15.0 before 2.0.0 resolve dotted-path strings found in a Kafka connection's extra field into Python callables via import_string, with no allowlist, and hand them to the confluent-kafka client which invokes them. Deployments that have enabled the Kafka event producer — dag_run_events_enabled or task_instance_events_enabled, both disabled by default — build that client inside the scheduler process, so a user whose only privilege is editing Airflow connections gains arbitrary code execution in the control plane; the Airflow security model limits connection-configuration users to code execution on workers, not the scheduler. Deployments using Google Managed Kafka are not affected, because that code path overwrites any user-supplied oauth_cb; plain brokers and Amazon MSK are exposed. Users are recommended to upgrade to apache-airflow-providers-apache-kafka 2.0.0 or later, which adds an allowlist configuration option for connection-string callbacks.